Iroduku: The World in Colors – Ep. 8

Obviously, I ask a rhetorical question there. I’m pretty sure I have not made my fondness of this character a secret in the slightest. Not only was she the most likable character from the get go, she also fit in the cast so well that I honestly forgot that it took four episodes to properly introduce her. And since then, she just continues to be a delight onscreen.

About time we get an episode centered around this girl too. The other characters do get some attention but for the most part, you’re following Kohaku and her efforts to help Hitomi in a couple of ways. The first being figuring out the cause behind Hitomi’s color blindness. Kohaku provides a very sound theory to that, suggesting that her granddaughter had, for whatever reason, subconsciously put a curse on herself. Therefore, the emotional moment Hitomi shared with Yuito in Episode 6 could be viewed as a trigger for the magic to be undone, even if temporarily. In that case, all that really needs to be done is to recreate the scenario and spur the same feelings Hitomi must’ve felt at the time.

And so, Kohaku takes it upon herself to conduct some experiments, even dragging Yuito into helping as well. What ends up happening though is Kohaku playing matchmaker. A lot of having Yuito and Hitomi stand in close proximity to each other with some measures, with or without magic, taken to try and get their hearts racing (it ends up annoying them instead). The fact that Kohaku is Hitomi’s grandmother makes this series of events even funnier. Barring her current age, it really looks like a grandparent arranging a relationship for her grandchild. Come to think about it, I do wonder how much Kohaku actually ships it. There’s a telling bit where she asks Hitomi details on the night the latter could see colors and she genuinely expected her to say she kissed Yuito. The girl really is a grandmother at heart.

The other, more pressing manner Kohaku has been attending to is practicing time magic. After all, she needs to be ready when the day comes that she must send Hitomi back in time and also be ale to send her back. Some progress seems to be made as Kohaku can successfully revert objects to a previous state. The catch however is that the effects are only temporary. By the end of the episode, all the items she bewitched revert to their current state after a couple of hours. While this could be setting up for Kohaku to eventually succeed, I think her very failure is what we’re truly supposed to consider. Truth be told, I question the prospect of Kohaku mastering time magic by the end of the series. It just seems unrealistic when you consider that it took her future self the entire intervening period of six decades just to muster enough power to send Hitomi to the present. Maybe a one-way trip is what she’ll have to settle on.

Even if Kohaku does succeed in the end, you have Hitomi’s own feelings to consider. At first, Hitomi doesn’t give a straight answer but as this episode progresses, you can tell that she’s so happy in the time period she lives in. She has a tight circle of friends, has grown very comfortable with taking pictures, and nostalgically thinks back to the moments she captures. Even if she didn’t say it outright at the end of the episode, it’s obvious that she wants to stay in the present. It doesn’t help that the other members of the club seem to share that sentiment. Shou is particularly vocal about wanting Hitomi to stay and while Yuito still throws on a poker face, it’s safe to assume that he feels the same way.

There seems to be two central dramatic questions in Iroduku: The World in Colors. The first being “Will Hitomi be happy again?” while the second asks “Will Kohaku be able to make Hitomi happy?”. Whether or not Hitomi will fully regain her ability to see colors is still just a possibility but it’s clear from recent events, that she looks happier than she did at the start of the series. Kohaku seems to have the more complicated task. She firmly believes magic is to make people happy and she considers it her responsibility to make sure Hitomi can come back to the future. But when her granddaughter says she’d like to stay, Kohaku realizes that her two ideals clash and for the first time, realizes that helping others with magic is easier said than done.

Other Thoughts:

One random detail that really raised an eyebrow was when Hitomi mentioned there was a picture book in her youth where she could always see the colors. Is Aoi possibly the illustrator? If so, I wonder if the book featured the golden fish. That would help tie Hitomi’s interest in it together.

That would be really smart of the writers to do and it’d be a perfect punch to the gut for the finale. If that actually happens though, I’m curious how graceful Hitomi’s exit would be. It’d be too funny if all of the sudden, *poof*, she just vanishes lol.